Restaurant Owner Flips the Table and Interviews Restaurant Coach

Hey there, restaurant pros. It’s David Scott Peters, and welcome to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast.

For over two decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurateurs I’ve coached, and it’s now the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success.

What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account instead of their restaurants dictating those things for them. Success is a restaurant owner who has freedom from the restaurant and financial freedom they never thought possible.

How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieving it is by using the Restaurant Prosperity Formula.

This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula: leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts, and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their own definition of success.

In this episode, number 134, we’ll be doing a segment I call Flip the Table, where a member takes over and interviews me. Today, I’m handing the mic to somebody who brings decades of restaurant experience to the table, Brian Sandel. He is an owner and partner of Creekwood Grill in Cypress, Texas, and is one of the very best people I know when it comes to developing high-performing restaurant teams.

Get ready, because he’ll be asking the questions, and I’ll let you know. He did the research preparing for our interview. Let’s listen in and see what Brian had up his sleeve.

Let’s get started.

Brian, I want to thank you for doing this with me today. I appreciate you.

Well, I mean, happy to be here. David, anytime. Anytime somebody who has impacted me as positively as you and your team and everybody in Mastery Plus has, if somebody comes and says, “Hey, can you do this for me?” the answer is always yes.

Well, I think we’ll have fun. We’ve spent many a night in Las Vegas after meetings having a couple of beers, so you and I are going to be fine talking.

But I do want people to know a little bit about you. I can tell you that we’ve now known each other for a number of years. You’ve been a part of the Mastery Plus group, which is my high-level mastermind group of restaurant owners. Your business partner, Mark, has been somebody I’ve worked with for many years, from seminars to my old company to now.

Really, where you and I met was at a Mastery Plus meeting, where three times a year we meet in Las Vegas with like-minded restaurant owners who want to make changes in their businesses.

But it is a high-level group of restaurant owners. It’s made up of people who have a growth mindset, want to share, and will openly say, “I’ve got a problem,” because they know we’re going to help each other.

You’ve been a part of that, and you have been integral in sharing with others and helping them.

You are somebody who has been in the business for a long time and, in my view, has been very good at increasing sales in your business and getting the most out of your management team. More importantly, you know how to build sales because you really take care of your guests. Restaurant 101. Hospitality. That is what you do extremely well.

Do me a favor. Tell people a little bit about your background and your restaurant.

Well, if you hadn’t wrapped it up with that last statement, I’d say, “Looks like we’re done here.”

No, that’s very kind of you to say all that, David. I do appreciate it. There’s a lot that has gone into it. It’s not just me. It’s been finding people like you and finding people like my partner, Mark. So I’ll explain how all that comes together.

I started my career in hospitality in the nightclub business, in DJ booths. It was the ’80s, and it was very fun and exciting. It was a blast.

I got married, and then that whole nightclub thing was maybe something we needed to look at changing. Like countless hundreds or thousands of others, a buddy of mine said, “Hey, the restaurant I’m working at now is looking for servers during the day. You want to come make a little money waiting tables?”

I thought, “Yeah, it sounds like fun. I’m sure I could figure out how to do that.”

That was 1990. Here we are, 35 years later, still stuck in this business.

It was something I immediately found fun. It’s very interactive. If you’ve ever done the Myers-Briggs, I’m an ESTJ. This industry is littered with ESTJs. It draws us in.

I thought, “How can I figure out how to make a living at this?” I moved through the ranks. Initially, I worked for a couple of independently owned restaurants, then a couple of different chains. I spent time with some smaller regional chains, ended up spending several years with one of the Brinker brands, moved over to the P.F. Chang’s company for a few years, and worked at Yard House most recently before we opened Creekwood.

I spent time with Raising Cane’s, too, so I’ve worked the gamut, from quick-service drive-through restaurants to Yard House, where you’re talking about $10 million a year in big-box, high-end restaurants.

About seven or eight years ago, I was looking at a place locally in the Cypress area that had just shut down. I was showing it to my wife, and we were looking through the window, kind of peeking in.

She said, “Well, what would you do with this place?”

I immediately started thinking about moving the bar, rearranging things, and fixing the flow. I didn’t know what I’d do with the kitchen because I’d never seen it, but I had all these ideas.

I took a step back, and she looked at me and said, “Let’s do it. It’s your turn. Let’s open a restaurant.”

For the rest of that night, I kept asking, “Do you fully understand what you have just greenlighted?”

She did, and she’s been supportive all the way. Obviously, it’s easier to be supportive when you’re successful, right? But she supported me even in the beginning.

You know my partner really well, and he’s the reason I know you, right?

Right.

About four years ago, on the back end of COVID, he looked at me and said, “Hey, man, do you want to go to Vegas with me to meet with this restaurant coach that I’m working with?”

I’m not sure that’s the word he used. You’ve been described with many adjectives, but we’ll go with coach for today.

Sure enough.

I thought, “Do you mean, do I want to go sit in a room full of people who are going to tell me and remind me of all the things I already know I’m not doing that I probably should be? I don’t know if that sounds like fun, but I’ll go for the refresher.”

Those first two days in Vegas, listening to you talk about mindset and listening to everybody else in that room, made a huge impression on me.

I don’t think Jeff was at the first meeting I attended, but he’s been at every one since. I sat next to Brianna Cowan. You know what that’s like, spending two days with Jonathan and Brianna, listening to them talk about their business, along with everybody else, including Raul.

I came away thinking, “Man, I don’t know if I learned more from David or from everybody else, and I don’t really care. When’s the next meeting?”

Let’s buy the plane tickets right now.

It’s been a little different for me because, especially in RTI, you work with a lot of people, and there are as many different ways to get into restaurant ownership as there are people who own restaurants.

There are people who don’t have the benefit of having had multiple corporations teach them how to make money, grow sales, take care of customers, and understand the difference between service and hospitality.

All those things were pounded into me for 25-plus years, which gave me a head start compared with many others I’ve met in the industry.

But then you get through those first couple of years, and being an owner is totally different from being a GM, a regional manager, or wearing any of those other hats we’ve all worn.

Then there’s figuring out how to get through the first couple of years of working with Mark, when we just wanted to kill each other every day.

I know he’s told you he wanted to murder me. There were days when I thought that if we both made it out of the building alive, it would be a miracle.

And we did.

I’ve heard you mention in one of the podcasts, I think it was Jonathan and Brianna’s, that when they asked for your first piece of advice, you said, “Don’t have a partner.”

I could not have done it without Mark.

I knew there was a lot I didn’t know. Mark’s history, his track record, his expertise, and his position in the community were elements he brought to the table that I knew I didn’t have but that we absolutely needed.

So I said, “Mark, do you want to open a restaurant together?”

We talked about that several times. Then, after we sobered up, we thought maybe it still wasn’t a bad idea.

Creekwood was born just over seven years ago, and you and I met about two years ago.

The mindset lessons you taught me were instrumental in helping me position myself as the leader my restaurant needed me to be to grow it from where it was then to where it is today.

It’s been a lot of fun watching your journey. Again, you’re a restaurant pro.

The biggest thing is learning to change your role from being the guy who could do everything to having people on your team. You really made that happen. You’ve repositioned yourself to truly be an owner instead of having to be on the floor every single day doing everything.

We’ve seen growth in sales, improvements in your management team, and decisions about expanding the business, including redoing the backyard.

You literally put turf in instead of regular grass, increasing sales because people want to bring their kids and know they won’t get muddy when it rains like hell in the Houston area.

All those things happened because you changed your role.

Now I’m going to ask you to change your role one more time.

This is the segment we call Flip the Table. Instead of being the interviewer, I’m going to be the interviewee. I’m turning it over to you.

We’ve not talked about what you’re asking, so I’m excited to see what you’ve got. It’s your show, sir.

Okay. Well, I’d already watched a couple of the Flip the Table episodes, so I was excited when you guys reached out and asked if I’d be willing to do one.

Not in any particular order, I want to find out more about you. We can talk nuts and bolts and all that other stuff, but let’s dig into DSP.

I’ll start with a couple of questions.

I know you’ve been asked this before, but if you weren’t a restaurant coach and stand-up comic wasn’t on the list of options, what would you be doing? You need to make money. You’re not independently wealthy, and you can’t just row for the rest of your days.

Well, there was a dream I had when I was in college. I was a Division I scholarship athlete at Northeastern University, and I started taking anatomy and physiology. I was going to take kinesiology and all these other things.

My idea was to coach. I could easily have seen myself continuing my rowing journey after graduation, becoming an assistant coach somewhere, learning, and working my way up.

I love the sport, and I really enjoy seeing people make changes. I guess coaching has always been part of my future. I just thought back then that I’d continue in the sport and stay in the coaching realm.

The goal would have been to work my way up to becoming a head coach at the collegiate level.

Okay, so essentially the same set of moves, just a different arena.

Yeah. It’s working with people and getting the most out of them. It’s a system of processes, whether you’re perfecting a rowing stroke for efficiency and working well as a team or working well as a restaurant team and following a system.

It’s the same stuff. I guess nothing has really changed in my life. It’s just a question of the topic or subject matter.

It’s funny you say that because every time I come back from one of the Mastery Plus trips, my management team is waiting for me. They’re like, “Okay, systems and processes, systems and processes, systems and processes.”

In Jonathan and Brianna’s episode, they asked you a couple of questions. You’ve worked with a ton of restaurateurs.

Yeah.

They asked you about a Kitchen Nightmares experience. You talked about what happened and described walking into the back of the house, where there were cleanliness and sanitation issues. But you never finished that story.

Do you remember the restaurant you were talking about?

I do. It was in Pittsburgh. It was a bistro-style Italian restaurant doing $2 million a year. It was beautiful inside, and the food was pretty darn good. Some of it was amazing.

I can tell you that the chef didn’t show up for the walkthrough. That’s when I walk through your restaurant.

God bless anybody who invites me into their restaurant. I’ve been uninvited in the past by friends who say, “I’ll show up,” and then I ask, “Hey, can I take a look around?”

My old friend Steve Brown, God rest his soul, said, “Nope, you’re not allowed in my kitchen anymore. Just sit down and have dinner.”

With that said, I remember the sous chef coming in. I’ve only lost my temper twice in the restaurant business: once when I was a manager and once as a coach.

I literally lost it. You have a moral and legal responsibility to run a safe kitchen.

For those who haven’t listened to the other interview, I walked through the restaurant and found raw sewage coming up where food prep was being done. The day dots weren’t done. Things weren’t covered properly. On the line, they were warming up soup in the steam table instead of in a pot.

It was one problem after another. You didn’t even want to see what the refrigeration looked like. It was unbelievable.

Then this guy walks into the walk-in, and I lose my temper. It should have been the chef.

I ultimately looked at the restaurant owner and said, “I will no longer eat in your restaurant until this is cleaned. Everything. You need to pull everybody in here, and you are going to clean this place. I’m telling you right now, I will not eat another thing in here until it happens.”

That’s how bad it was.

It was a pretty big deal because, at the time, somebody was paying me for consulting. I had flown in and was being paid a good amount of money to help make changes in the business.

And I looked the owner in the eye and said, “I’m not eating a thing out of your place.”

It’s pretty bold, but there was no way to sugarcoat it, if that makes sense.

And so what happened after that night?

Everybody was all hands on deck. They cleaned the hell out of that place, and I was able to eat in that restaurant two days later.

It was disgusting.

It’s what happens when we stop looking at our restaurants with pride.

Part of the problem is that some people who don’t have restaurant experience buy a restaurant for whatever reason. The owner of that restaurant had built a real estate portfolio and had somebody lined up to open a restaurant. That person backed out at the last minute, so she thought, “How hard could it be? I’m going to open a restaurant.”

When you have no restaurant experience, you often look at the back of the house and think, “Oh, it’s scary. I don’t want to look back there because I don’t know what to say. I need a professional chef. I need a kitchen manager. I need somebody to handle this.”

When you abdicate responsibility for your restaurant to somebody else, they’re going to do what they’re going to do. Sometimes they get lazy, and that’s what happened here. The restaurant became disgustingly dirty.

But as a restaurant owner, whether you have restaurant experience or not, you know what dirty looks like. You know what clean looks like. You know what food safety is. You took a course, otherwise you couldn’t open the business.

You know what plate presentation you want to see.

We’ve got to be able to walk back there and say, “I don’t need to know how to work a knife. I need to say, that’s not my standard. I need it done differently.”

Better yet, as we talk about the importance of checklists, put a system in place that allows you to impose your standards without being there. The restaurant should be clean whether I’m there or not.

That’s really what it comes down to. Often, we’re afraid of the back of the house, and so things go downhill.

Yeah. I think that’s the more important part of the story. When you recognize what’s getting in your way and are willing to tackle it, that’s what leads to success.

I wanted to know what happened because I felt like Paul Harvey. What’s the rest of the story?

Man, you are dating us.

Yeah, me too, buddy. You know what that reference is?

Yeah.

And so they were able to put the situation back together. Are they still around? What’s the latest?

I know they’re not. They sold the restaurant to a big-name Pittsburgh Steeler who had retired. I’ll leave the name out because I don’t want to send anyone bad juju. But it was sold.

Yeah, okay. It’s funny how many people get into the restaurant business thinking it’ll be fun.

My favorite is the person who says, “I retired and opened a restaurant.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. You picked the toughest business I know. You’re not retiring. You’re starting a whole new career.

Yeah. Obviously, that was a big success, being able to convince them what they needed to do, show them what they needed to do, and get them to put in the work to get past it.

Think about one of your proudest achievements helping somebody get over a hump and find success. Then tell me about a situation where you thought, “Damn it, I really thought I could help them. I really thought we were going to get them across the finish line,” but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen.

Proudest? There are so many good stories. I’ve literally worked with thousands of restaurant owners and their managers, from my old company to where we are today.

Maybe somebody you didn’t think was going to make it who proved you wrong.

I think we can look at it two ways. Maybe not the proudest, but I can tell you about my favorite restaurant. I’m not saying this to upset you or any of my other members, and it’s not even from this group. It’s from my old group, meaning my old company.

The restaurant is called Okeechobee Steakhouse in West Palm Beach, Florida. It started as a catfish restaurant, a diner kind of place in the middle of the marshes, when nobody was around there.

We’re now three generations deep in ownership. Over time, society expanded into the area, and it turned into a steakhouse. I think it’s been open for 70 years or more.

It has the highest-quality products, top-level service, and a great culture.

The challenge was that the second-generation owner couldn’t teach others how to do what he did. He opened another restaurant, and when he went over there, that one would suffer. He’d come back, and the original would suffer.

I think at one point he had a few restaurants, but he would literally have to sell them and come back because he knew his business so well.

Curtis was amazing. He knew more than I did, I guarantee you. He had grown up in the business.

He was the kind of guy who walked in, printed off his product mix report every morning, grabbed a cup of coffee, a pencil, and a calculator, and went through the numbers every single day.

He could figure out what prep was needed, what ordering needed to be done, and whether a promotion was working. He just knew everything, but he did it all with paper and pencil.

The challenge was expanding the restaurant and, more importantly, developing a management team.

One of my proudest moments was being part of an already fantastic business and helping him train and select his management team.

We worked through the objections: “No, that won’t work. You don’t understand. We’re different.”

Eventually, his son took over, and Ralph is doing an incredible job. I think they’ve opened three or four additional restaurants, using the team that was built in the original store.

Once you change the culture and get people trained and ready, there’s nothing you can’t do because it’s the same system, no matter where you go. Of course, you need different leadership at each location.

I’m going to give all the credit to Ralph Lewis for growing the business, but I give Curtis Lewis credit for recognizing that, even though he was good at what he did, he needed help with training others. It couldn’t just be him doing everything.

He recognized that, as successful as he was, he could bring somebody in and become even better.

I think that’s one of my favorite things: seeing that kind of change.

Now, somebody I didn’t think would make it? I’ll be dead straight with you. I don’t bring people on if I don’t think they’re going to make it because I’m making an investment.

If you’re not going to do the work or you’ve got a bad mindset, I don’t want to play. I really don’t, because I want to enjoy the people I work with.

We joke around. I’ve talked about how you and I have had beers together. When we’re in Vegas together, we’re going to be friendly. Otherwise, what am I doing?

I don’t want to surround myself with people I don’t like, and vice versa.

So I don’t really have a good answer for that one.

Okay. Well, that’s probably good. It makes sense to put yourself in a position where you can say, “Look, I don’t have to hang out with people I don’t like.”

I had a friend who got very excited because he wanted to open a private club. He wanted to open a restaurant, but part of it would be a private club.

I spent several years working in the energy sector in Houston, where you’ve got a whole bunch of executives with tons of money who aren’t used to hearing the word no.

I’m thinking, “Why would I want to open a place that attracts those guys?”

There are people who are designed to work with them. That’s not me. I’m going out to Cypress, and we’re going to hang out with the families.

So, let’s use that as a segue. Why Vegas?

I’ll tell you. I picked Vegas 23 years ago for my first seminar, meetings, and everything else I did because I knew, number one, restaurant owners and managers like debauchery. There’s no better place for debauchery than Las Vegas.

There’s drinking, gambling, and anything else you’re looking for. It’s all there.

It’s also got a lot of big-name chefs and restaurants, so the foodie types would come out and say, “I want to go to this restaurant, and this restaurant, and this restaurant.”

The biggest reason, though, was that if you came out in the beginning, it was a four-day workshop. Now it’s a two-day seminar because I’m getting old.

How do I get you to get on an airplane and come out for four days? What if this guy sucks, meaning me? At least you’re in Vegas.

That helped people get over the hurdle of asking why they should invest and get on a plane. At least they would be in Vegas.

One of my good friends, Brad Hackard, who became a coach and consultant for me and whom you may have met, was another example. He’s been a guest at our meeting a couple of times at Florabama. He’s the director of operations there, and he’s an incredible guy.

That’s how he got there. He was a restaurant manager who thought, “If this sucks, at least I’m in Vegas.”

That’s probably the main reason.

Yeah. There are a few adventures I’ve been part of that we won’t share details about on this podcast.

Vegas has stories. We just keep them to ourselves.

Well, just two words: secret pizza. And we’re going to move on.

There we go.

Again, I want to get to know you a little better personally. Let’s talk about the ink you have, the tattoos.

Like most of us who have tattoos, and especially in the restaurant business, there are a lot of folks with tattoos. The two of us included.

Tell me about yours. What do they mean? What do they represent? How did you decide to get exactly what you got and make a permanent statement?

My first tattoo came when I was about 54 or 55 years old. I don’t know exactly. I was over 50, and it was really about bonding with my kids.

My son was a Marine and was starting to get tattoos. My daughter was expressing herself and getting tattoos, too. I wanted to bond with them.

Initially, I got a tattoo on my forearm of Thor’s hammer, with the words “Take Action” on it.

If you know me or listen to me, you know it’s all about taking action. My dad had a phrase: “Ideas are cheap. It’s the people who put them into action who are priceless.”

So “Take Action” is important.

But Thor’s hammer has another meaning. When I was in high school, I’m going to share this: I was a Dungeons & Dragons player.

We would spend two days, all weekend long, without sleep, eating pizza and all this other stuff, rolling dice, and having an incredible campaign.

I love sci-fi and fantasy, so I was a D&D guy. One of my main characters, Meldar, was a halfling thief-fighter who worshipped Thor.

So I have Thor’s hammer on my arm, but it’s actually the Marvel Thor hammer, not the original one.

Then, during her sophomore year in college, my daughter was playing volleyball and had been recruited for it. She was studying, and at one point, she sat in a chair getting another tattoo.

She was talking with the tattoo artist, who asked what she wanted to do. She mentioned something she’d love to do, and the artist asked if she’d like to become an apprentice.

The next thing we knew, we got a phone call from our daughter asking, “Would you be upset if I dropped out and became a tattoo artist?”

I said, “No, hell no.”

Six months into her apprenticeship, she gave me a tattoo on my forearm of a single scull, with the initials of all the rowing clubs I’ve rowed with.

Those include Atlantic City High School, Northeastern University, Rio Salado Rowing Club, where I row now, and Endeavor Racing Alliance, where I’m part of a crew that meets in different places to race.

Rowing is a passion of my life, and those clubs represent the places I’ve been.

She did that tattoo downstairs at our house, six months into her training.

Then, a year later, she did another tattoo for me, a Lord of the Rings montage she put together.

I’ve got to look at it. It’s got Gandalf’s pipe, Smaug’s eye in the magical smoke, the Seeing Stone, and a Hobbit hole.

It’s just freaking cool. She designed it, and it’s right up my alley. Again, fantasy, sci-fi, D&D.

Then, keeping with the same theme, she did a dragon on my other arm a year later.

It’s not only cool to have things that mean something to me, but I also have four tattoos, three of which my daughter did.

So I’m always saying, “See what my daughter did! See what my daughter did!”

It’s pretty damn cool.

Well, that’s awesome. I appreciate you sharing that.

I’ve known you for a while, but I didn’t realize until today that you’re a low-key nerd, man. I didn’t realize the extent of it.

I think you shared the D&D thing before, but D&D and Lord of the Rings? We’re digging a little deeper into DSP today.

I have a ton more questions, but there are two more things I want to do. I want to swing it back and get a little more serious.

In the Flip the Table episode you did with David Militello, who, by the way, is an amazing restaurant operator, you referenced something called imposter syndrome.

If you notice when we come to Vegas, anytime we’re in social settings, you’ll see me sitting fairly close to him. I respect so much of what he does, the way he runs his business, and the way he thinks. He’s a great guy.

In that interview, you referenced imposter syndrome. I didn’t know it had a name, but I’ll tell you, there are days when I wake up and think, “At some point, everybody is going to go, ‘Who let him in this room? What’s he doing here?’”

I thought it was just a me thing. Then I heard you talk about it, and it made a huge difference for me.

Share a little more about your experience with that. Hearing you talk about it made a difference for me, and there may be others listening who could benefit from it, too.

I didn’t really know there was a term for it until talking with John and Brianna.

They talked about how they’d grown their pizzeria from him being a pizza guy who made deliveries and bought a restaurant that barely did any sales to building what they have today.

They’re probably two of the most successful restaurant operators we know. They deliver incredible hospitality and focus on making sure they provide the greatest experience and food. Their numbers are strong, and they’re building their team. They’re freaking rock stars.

And they had imposter syndrome.

Now it had a label. As a Gen Xer, I thought, “Wait a minute. What is this imposter syndrome?” We’re learning all these terms the young kids have come up with.

Then David and I talked about it.

The biggest thing for me is that I didn’t experience imposter syndrome when I was a restaurant manager. When I was a restaurant manager, I was God’s gift to the restaurant world. Nobody could have told me otherwise.

I was the best server, host, busser, and food runner all at the same time. I owned that place.

It started when I decided to teach restaurant systems.

I had an incredible background at Coyote Springs, putting systems together and creating processes. I’d already started working as the director of operations for a 30-unit restaurant sports bar chain that was a franchisor. I was training people, opening stores, and doing all those things.

I’d come back to help turn the business around, and I was doing that. I had all this success.

But I’d go to conferences like the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Arizona. It was very chain-driven, and I’d go there as part of this small regional chain with about 30 units.

There were all these people from Brinker, whom I’d worked with before. It was almost incestuous. These people knew each other. They came from PepsiCo and other companies, and they were incredibly bright. They built huge concepts with thousands of restaurants.

And here I was, this little guy thinking, “We had 34 locations at our peak. I’m just this little guy.”

Then I decided to go out on my own, knowing I was selling myself out of a job. I had this passionate idea that I’d start doing seminars, put out information products, and become the guy.

I’d put things out there and think, “When am I going to be discovered? I don’t know as much as these guys from PepsiCo and Brinker. I don’t know that stuff.”

What I eventually learned was that as long as I know more than the person I’m talking to, I’m helping them.

The crazy part is that, in my 23rd year of coaching, I’ll put myself up against anybody because I’ve experienced so much.

I have thousands, if not millions, of points of data. Sometimes stuff comes out of my mouth, and I think, “Where did that come from?”

It’s all the experience I’ve gained from working with different owners, reviewing different menus, putting budgets together, walking through restaurants, and dealing with the challenges of business partners.

It all comes together, and now I can look you in the eye and say, “Yeah, I’m a restaurant expert.”

Twenty-three years ago, I was thinking, “When is somebody going to figure out I don’t know anything?”

That was really what it came down to.

Yeah. It’s encouraging to hear people around you talk about experiencing the same thing. There’s no better word for it than encouraging.

I truly appreciate you sharing that. Listening to you talk about it made a difference to me, and it had a profound impact on me.

When you recognize it, it changes the way you interact with people.

I tell my team all the time that every person you meet has something you can learn from. Every person.

Sometimes the lesson might be, “I’m not doing anything the way they did it.” But you learned something from them, right?

Okay, one last thing I think is going to be fun for me, hopefully fun for you, and hopefully fun for everybody watching this.

Rapid fire. The first answer that comes into your mind, okay?

Coke or Pepsi?

Coke.

Beach or mountains?

Beach.

Baseball or football?

Football.

Steak or chicken?

Steak.

Beer or wine?

Beer.

Fiction or biography?

Fiction.

Shorts or slacks?

Shorts.

All day long.

Late nights or early mornings?

That changed. It’s early mornings for me now. I wake up at 3:15 in the morning to get on the water.

It would have been late nights if you’d asked me four or five years ago. Late nights all day long. But now I’m an old man.

What about the first week in February, June, or the second week in November?

In Vegas, when I’m up 24 hours with you guys. Yes.

Keyboard or pen and paper?

Pen and paper.

Dogs or cats?

Dogs.

Comedy or drama?

Comedy.

Sweet or savory?

Sweet.

Los Angeles or New York?

New York.

All right. Apple or Android?

Apple.

And the last one, and there is a right and a wrong answer on this one: Houston or Dallas?

What if I told you I’m not a fan of either?

Fair.

As long as it’s not during the muggy season. I’ve been to Houston when it’s supposed to be nice out, and the humidity makes me feel like I’m melting.

It’s not the city. It’s the weather. Dallas isn’t much better, man. It’s hot, and they get ice. I don’t know.

Okay, well, I’m pretty sure winter is supposed to be on a Wednesday this year down here, so I’ll double-check the calendar.

One final question.

Yeah.

I’ve got four I’m going to pick from. Actually, no, I’m going to do two.

What’s your favorite movie of all time?

Lord of the Rings.

Should have seen that coming.

Yeah.

If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Pizza. Easy.

I knew that, too. We’ve walked eight miles for a slice of pizza before.

Yes, we have, at three o’clock in the morning, for that matter.

At three o’clock in the morning, yes.

Man, thanks for giving me the chance to do this. It’s been a blast.

I appreciate you doing it. I hope everybody enjoys what we’ve gone over. More importantly, I appreciate you and what you bring to the group, and I’m glad you did this with me.

If there’s anything in the future, we’re going to do this again. I’m going to find you because this was fun.

I appreciate you, Brian, very much.

Awesome. All right. We’ll talk again soon.

Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant.

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